


Smoke and Mirrors

by a_taller_tale



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Angst, Blood, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-07
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-30 17:05:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10167731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_taller_tale/pseuds/a_taller_tale
Summary: Simmons' issues were like landmines. Hidden and scattered everywhere. Easy to step on when you were least expecting it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for an image prompt from Zalia Chimera's Iron Gulch challenge. Takes place between seasons 1 and 2.

Simmons' issues were like landmines. Hidden and scattered everywhere. Easy to step on when you were least expecting it. 

Bring up family? Talks about how his dad ran off. 

Friends? Had all the people he thought were friends throw rocks at him out in the woods on his birthday one time. 

High school? –Actually, Grif hadn’t brought up high school, fearing the rant or sob story that would doubtlessly follow. 

Pretty much the only safe topics were sci-fi and philosophizing over the mysteries of the universe. 

Simmons’ jagged edges smoothed out over the months, then year they were all together in the canyon. The only other people they had to talk to were Donut, who neither of them liked much, Lopez, who only spoke Spanish, or Sarge—well, Simmons would probably love it if Sarge wanted to talk to him, but that wasn’t happening. 

The point was that Simmons did the crying thing around Grif a lot less as time went on. He’d thought maybe the guy was growing a thicker skin, but he only seemed to have a thicker skin around Grif. Now when Grif teased him, he lobbed insults back more often than not. It made him better company in this hell-hole, unless he was ganging up on Grif with Sarge. Grif hadn’t seen Simmons cry in at least a week. 

It must’ve been 3am in the Gulch Where the Sun Never Sets when he heard the crash of glass shattering. 

Grif fell out of bed, half certain everyone was already dead. By the time he'd pulled on his pants he realized there was no gunfire, no other noise followed. The base was quiet. 

Simmons wasn’t in his bunk, but Donut’s bed was still occupied. Guy hadn’t even moved, he could really sleep like the dead… 

Grif paused and watched Donut’s chest rise and fall once before he grabbed his smokes and a lighter and left the room to wander toward where the crash had come from. 

The light was on in the base’s shared bathroom. 

Simmons, shirtless and pale, was on his knees on the floor surrounded by shards of glass that sparkled and glared under the florescent lights. The knuckles of his right hand were dark with blood and he was shaking and crying with big gulps of air in between. 

“What the fucking fuck?” 

Simmons swallowed and then sniffed hard, eyes swollen. This wasn’t that usual choking crying because someone accidentally stepped on his insecurities. This was something…bigger. 

“What does it look like, fat-ass?” Simmons said after a delay, like it was difficult to speak. 

“It looks like you went fucking psycho on that mirror.” 

Simmons looked dead-eyed at the floor again. “Oh,” he said. “Yeah.” He suddenly wiped at his face, like he was ashamed for Grif to see him cry, which was ridiculous when he’d seen him cry at least a couple hundred times. The destruction of property was new. 

Wiping at his face had streaked it with blood. It reminded him of… 

Well, now he couldn’t go back to sleep. “You wanna smoke?” 

Not that he actually expected Simmons to smoke. Simmons liked to find Grif’s smoking spots and act like he’d caught him doing something illegal just to hang out and bitch about how bad it was for his health or whatever. 

The army was bad for his health. Smoking was stress relief. 

Simmons gave him a look like _‘you’re not going to comment any further on my breakdown?’_

Nah, dude. Grif had half raised a teenage girl. He wasn’t going to give tantrums like this any attention they didn’t deserve. “Just get out of the glass. Come on.” 

Simmons ignored his offered hand and got up on his own, absently brushing shards from his sleep pants and went to the closet nearby to start sweeping. He had bare feet too. Jesus. 

“Just leave it, man. Lopez’ll clean it.” Or Sarge would step on it during a midnight piss, but he deserved it. 

Simmons still swept the glass into the dust pan and deposited it in the trash, taking a deep shuddering breath for every few normal ones. He followed Grif to the roof of the base like a sleepwalker. 

Grif sat down and Simmons followed suit, the light reflecting off his hair and his pale skin. It’s too bad they were mostly outside in armor. It would be good to see him with a sunburn or something. Right now with the circles like bruises under his eyes, the blood on his face, and the pallor of his indoor-nerd-tan, he looked like patient zero of the zombie apocalypse. 

Simmons was still unnaturally quiet. It was odd, because Grif had noticed silence could make Simmons uncomfortable. He was usually the first to fill it with nerd facts. At least he wasn’t cry-hiccupping anymore. 

Since Simmons wasn’t volunteering what brought on his sudden need to assault the bathroom mirror and Grif wasn't really the talking-about-feelings type anyway, he just pulled out his cigarettes. 

Lighting up and taking a puff, he soaked in the nicotine and that unchanging, hot, suffocating desert sun. “Y’know, this early the sun does look like morning sun even though it never changes position. Brain playing tricks, I guess.” 

To his surprise, Simmons snatched the cigarette out of his hand to take a drag, which was a little weird since Grif would have given him his own if he asked. Simmons pulled the smoke straight into his lungs like it was a joint and immediately started hacking. 

The nerd did not need his own cigarette. Grif took it back while Simmons recovered. “Old pro, huh?” 

“Shut up,” Simmons croaked. 

Grif hid the smirk on his face by turning back to face the canyon, letting the smoke disperse out in front of them.


End file.
